Further delays requested on CIA report

Public access to the Senate report into the CIA’s detention and interrogation policies will have to wait a little longer it appears.

Senate Intelligence Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has notified Attorney General Eric Holder that it would be inappropriate to release portions of the summary of the panel’s report under a Freedom of Information Act request while declassification negotiations continue between the committee and the White House.

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Both Feinstein and the Obama administration had suggested that the 500-page summary of the report on the Bush-era CIA interrogation techniques could be released publicly sometime in August. But committee Democrats have battled against the administration’s extensive redactions, delaying the report’s release.

The report is expected to include new details on the use of secret prisons overseas and waterboarding of enemy combatants.

Feinstein wrote in an Aug. 12 letter that releasing the information now through the FOIA by reporter Jason Leopold, of Vice News, would be harmful to the committee’s effort to wipe away some of the redactions insisted upon by the CIA and the administration.

“Not only would it be inappropriate for the Department [of Justice] to release documents related to the Committee’s study prior to the Committee’s own release, but the result of the ongoing negotiations [with the administration] will likely positively affect the redactions in the documents sought through the FOIA process,” Feinstein wrote ahead of an Aug. 29 round of filings in the FOIA case. “I ask that you request an additional one-month delay.”

This was an area the administration and Feinstein could agree on after a months-long division over the CIA’s search of computers used by Senate staff to research the CIA report that has some senators demanding that CIA Director John Brennan resign.

“The Executive Branch worked expeditiously to complete its internal declassification review process and submitted a redacted version of the executive summary, findings, and conclusions of the Report to [the committee] on August 1, 2014. Because the discussions with SSCI over the redactions are still ongoing, however, and may not be completed by August 29, 2014, the government respectfully requests a further extension of one month, until September 29, 2014, to complete processing of the so-called internal study in this case,” Justice Department attorneys wrote in requesting a delay of Leopold’s efforts to win release of the CIA report before the committee moves to do so.

Committee Democrats have argued that the report is essentially unreadable in its current redacted reform, requiring a new round of negotiations between the Intelligence Committee and the administration over what portions of the report could be harmful to U.S. intelligence personnel and what portions must be made public.

“Try reading a novel with 15 percent of the words blacked out — it can’t be done properly,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) earlier this month.